Will communism have prisons?

madashell wrote:

Touché pussycat . But I did suggest that the works be used as a foundation for something new.

I’ve been thinking about the stereotypical rapist/nonce/serial-killer, they’re generally white, middle class suburban types with an outwardly ‘normal’ appearance. More often than not, due to some form of childhood bullying, they’ve flirted with political opinions/parties/groups that mainstream society considers ‘extreme’, usually fascist, but not exclusively so. Although they can be quite charming, they have few true friendships, i.e. friendships that are not based on political/philosophical allegiances.

Does anyone on these forums fit that description?

And, with prevention being better than cure, should we lock them up now, just in case.

Hallow Vera.
H.C.

While serial killers are often white, there are plenty of rapists to go around for everyone, anywhere in the world and this means that rapists also (shocker) can be of other various states of pigmentation.

Correct, but the melanoma misnomer was not of my making, hence the word ‘stereotypical’ in the previous statement.

you mean if they raped me? i'd probably want to stab the fucker, i'm not a christian. don't think we should base 'communist justice' on that though. like i say there's a certain amount of punishment involved segregating somone away, i don't want anything on top of that. i mean i hate paedos, don't think they should have to sleep on beds of nails in tiny cells or something though.

well that's what i'm saying, i think it's a good idea for society to restrain my urge to vengeance. and there is an irreducible element of punishment to any kind of detention as i keep saying. that and you accusing anyone of posturing ...

But why? What would that achieve?

Out of curiosity, what do you think of the idea of restorative justice?

well the hypothetical is a bit like saying 'assume there's no crime or discord, then we won't need prisons' - i mean if someone rapes someone else, you can never say they definately won't do it again without at the very least a period of supervised assessment etc.

although even granting you that, there have been some positive reports of restorative justice with victims meeting face to face to discuss the impact with the perpetrator, making them realise the consequences of their actions etc. for non-sociopaths that would seem the best kind of thing to do - though it could be pretty hard to sit and listent to what you've done to someone, perhaps satisfying your bloodlust?

Jack: as alf said we have to see that for communism to have been achieved there will have had to have been a fundamental change in consciousness. This does not mean there will not be anti-social behaviour, for whatever reason, but it will mean a profound change in the way that society views how to deal with such behaviour. The aim will be to deal with why this crime took place not simply to punish it.
On the wider question of emotional life under communism, this will still be a constant concern. Humanity will have undergone a profound development of consciousness but the ability to understand and control the deepest recesses of our inner emotions still be a fundamental question for humanity. Our passions are part of the very foundations of being human, so under communism it will be a question of consciously freeing them from the constraints of class society; of the free play and development of real human passion.

And the first half score for this thread is...

ernie 1
throwbacks 0

Yeah the "well we wouldn't have prisons but we'd have some restraint" is all semantics really
whether you wanna call them prisons or not, a communist society would have to have some form of way for keeping complete and utter mental nutters (which of course would be a tiny tiny tiny minority, in fact so tiny you copuld probably just execute them and no one would notice ) away from the rest of society, while ideally trying to help them.

I think the opening posts of Devrim and Cantdo seem very sensible.

That sounds like it'd be a good film.

Unfortunately, for every proletarian geek there are a few thousands working for the capitalist regime, since geeks tend to be directed towards forms of work which encourage identification with the bourgeoisie. There are many roads for the kind of geek you would need to go, and most of them lead into the heartland of capitalist complicity.

From my experience, this is not a public with a great deal of revolutionary potential, and by its very nature capital manages to put "trustworthy" people in such loci of power. Surgical strikes require surgeons, whose very nature entails close links with capital.

Khawaga: I'm still not clear about what you're saying. You wrote: "I find it scary that he wants communism to have one set of corresponding ethics and morality that are universal, not the communism bit".

But the "communism bit" is the world human community. Why would it not have a universal morality?

Some people just get off on it. It's not because of commodity relations, that's for sure.

You can't pay for something under communism, you may as well reinstall exchange. I favour stocks.

No. Communism will not have prisons. Prisons are incompatible with basic morality. Sometimes I wonder if libcom is funded by the daily mail. It's like all these posters reckon they will never do anything illegal in their life and so reckon they'll never go to jail, but what happens if your life falls apart? What happens if your emotions get the better of you? What happens if frustration takes over? Now, all of the posters who reckon prisons are a good idea are probably either refusing to let morality figure in their day to day lives so they can avoid personal anguish, responsibility and conflict, or are entirely alienated from the working class, who make up most of the prison population, or are living in a dream world where bad things happen to other people. People are fallible, they do bad things, usually out of good intentions, punishing them by removal from society will only exacerbate their feelings of alienation and make them more likely to do bad things. Bad things happen to good people, and locking them up ain't going to change anything. Saying society demands harmful individuals be isolated is as good a justification as any for Stalinist purges.

No prisons under communism IMO. As xConorX points out, there's an element of semantics in having people restrained or separated, being the same as prisons, but I think we should be looking at how different things could be.

Prisons are not about protecting society, they are instruments of class rule first and foremost and only secondarily keep some dangerous people out of circulation. For a while. It's a bit like Albert's old analogy of you go to the police to find your lost dog because that's where lost dogs go, not because the police's other functions are ones that you recognise as valid.

THe big name killers would generally be kept secured or would likely be lynched if released. This was something Hindley never understood when she was asking for parole. But most killers are released and most don't do it again, despite the lack of rehabilitation in the prison system.

Of course, there will be somewhere to restrain the Huntleys, Murdochs and Bradys of this world, but I hope it isn't a prison.

Someone mentioned crimes of passion - unless your the lover of a criminal of passion, you don't really have to fear much, do you? It's hardly a repeat offence, particularly if people know about it. It might be that some groups would wnat to keep "punishment" but I really hope we'd evolve out of it pretty quick. What's its purpose - deterrence? "Justice"? Vengeance? Many pre-industrial societies have ways out of "punishment", usually by reparation or restoration. Were they wrong?

And if there are primmos in a communist society, we simply let them live somewhere without technology. Somewhere bleak and uninhabited. And then we let them come back to society when they realise they're not as good as Ray Mears and baked beans don't grow on trees.

Regards,

Martin

Take some responsibility and check yourself in before you do something you'll regret.

Entertainment.

so if someone carries out brutal murders, assualts or rapes what do we do with them?

You seem entirely alientated form just how many fucked up people there are in the world , what do you do with some cunts who raped his 18 month old baby with a bottle? Honestly i'd have them shot but presumably you'd not have that either.

Also martinH is talking semantic shite, a prison is somewhere used to isolate someone from the rest of the community, I don't give a fuck if calling it a prison upsets some dopey anarchists, (sure we can even have dual place names if it helps their liberal consciences).

I also think there is always a punitive aspect to justice, it's not a simple matter of making amends eg if a kid breaks your window or smashs up your car of something and then they have to sacrifice their pocket money towards paying for what they did we see it as justice being done, whilst if the kids rich and just hands over a bundle of money we don't see that as justice. Also resorative justice is fine for the majority of crimes but it's not adequate for something like rape or murder, afterall how do you make amends for that? I think punishment has a central role to play in giving a sense of justice, of evening things out.

Also this medicalisation of crime, oh they are just sick and need treatment carries the potential for a much more insidious and dangerous power dynamic than a straightforward swift act of punishment ie the person pays the price for their crime and sociery accepts that rather than medically dissecting the subject. By denying someone the ability to take responsibility for their crimes by labelling a sickness needing cured we destroy their subjectivity in a way that a simple punititive measure doesn't, like how Stalin didn't merely execute his opponents but forced them to lie, to deny themselves and their subjectivity before having them killed, they in a sense died twice.

it's a beautiful sentiment but impossible really to imagine working.

Revol

If you want to conflate isolating sociopaths from society with the vicious class institution that is prison, fine. I happen to think most working class people will understand the difference between what is called crime today and the behaviour of sociopaths. The vast majority of people in prison today are there because they either did some petty criminal activity, or were the wrong class in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As it happens I agree about the medicalisation of crime, but I do think that a lot of what will remain under a communist society would be medical.

On a more pertinent note, from Brodach's question, what happens when the state decides that libcom is a threat and fits up all the mods? While I hope it never happens to me, prison is an occupational hazard for anyone who regards themselves as a revolutionary. I would have thought that we would go to some lengths to draw a distance between prisons and any form of justice under communism, no?

Regards,

Martin

Why most working class people are able to distingusih between people who deserve to be in prison and those that don't. if someone asked me whether post revolution there will be prisons I said no, and then they asked well what would you do to rapists and murderers and i said keep them isloted in secure facilities from the rest of society, they'd laugh at me, call me a silly wanker, and point out that is for all intents and purposes a prison.

As for libertarian communists ending up in prison, well yes of course, but libertarian communists also end up on the wrong side of weapons, it doesn't mean to say we won't use guns.

well IME it's more that they wouldn't understand you, laugh and think you;re insane :-/

when i could still post on urban - i tried to convince people that we didn't need "social workers" and they all just laughed. false consciousness?

lem but we do need social workers under capitalism that much is obvious, post revolution we will still require people to take over many of the roles of social workers albeit in a completely different manner.

so you don't think it's possible for individuals to take over the role of swers under capitalism?

i dunno - are you agreeing with me very slyly or trying to patronize me

it's just not materialistic to sacrifice personal safety for the concept of freedom. and it's totally fucking weird to sacrifice your personal safety for the concrete freedom of a rapist. prisons - part of the social revolutions; but here to stay in some form :-/

I personally reckon some folks cold be isolated by giving them shitty jobs far away from the rest of society that would keep them isolated yet doing something usefull. Obviously not an option for all but it would serve as a punishment, they would still contribute, they couldn't reoffend and they would have the option of suicide as an alternative. I'm not exactly thinking salt mines or anything but there are bound to be a function they could serve whilst being kept away from the rest of society.
I'm not talking about people who's actions are the result of mental illness here more like the lad who killed someone I know the other day. He is only twenty, he's probably going to get life, 15 years+. I really wouldn't wish prison on any but the worst offendors.

OK,

The social institutions of a society operate in terms of human behaviors that are common within that society. Prisons, police and courts are social institutions which deal with "crime". In capitalist society, you have specialized enforcement units for the crimes which capitalist laws and capitalist relations create - anti-drug, anti-shoplifting, anti-fraud and so-forth units.

To say that communism would not have crime, is not saying that no one ever, ever would commit a horrific act. It is simply saying that such acts would be rare enough that no formalized institutions to deal with them would be needed. And this is what I believe. Sure, if horrific, anti-social acts happened, people would deal with them on ad-hoc basis - retribution, banishing, whatever.

-- This is also a different question from how to get there from here.

The pro-prison rants here disturb me. To think that a large portion of board member who are ostensibly libertarian communists of some sort fall for this society's "fear the predator" propaganda speaks to some kind of disconnect.

Red

^^ i feel slightly similarly about direct action as capital punishment TBH.

I think the fluffy nonsense about no need for prsions in a post revolutionary society speaks to a massive disconnect with reality.

Also what would banishing a serial killer do beyond leave them free to stalk elsewhere?

Some people seem to forget we don't live in tiny lil villages or towns where everyone knows each other and where things can be sorte dout on an ad hoc basis.

Did you read the first part of my post? The velocity of your fingers is exceeding that of your brain by a fair portion. I could come up with one or another solutions to whatever serial killers might very, very occasionally come into existence under communism but that would irrelevant to the nature of communism.

Do you think that the sociopathic acts of present day capitalism would be as common under communism as today? If so, why bother.

Anyway, read part 1 and get your two remaining neurons working together.